Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Well this is not going to be a short post, but I’m not going to recount every detail of every game. I’ll settle for a healthy middle ground of talking about the highlights… and low lights.

First off, cheers to Chris Otton for both organizing the event and getting my wallet back after I left it at the venue. Also, cheers to Craig for a lift to and from the event; many thanks to you two.

Overall, I think I played relatively well, I dealt with the clock better than I expected and only got totally pantsed in one round (By the eventually tournament winner no less). I still had to ask a fair few questions, but I didn’t drag too many games down into a morass of “how does this work again”…. At least I think I didn’t

I ended up tied for the sportsmanship award, so at least a few people didn’t find me annoying to play against. (The winner of that was Craig, winning a roll off)

Most importantly, I missed out on winning the title of Swamp Gobber! Yes my intrepid readers, someone had a worse time of it than I did! The winner of that esteemed prize is my old friend Boyd.

Boyd may be swamp gobber, but his Menoth looked good!

Every 35-point or higher game of Warmachine MKII I have ever played is documented on this site. I headed into my first tournament with a stunning 7 games experience, and a 2-5 record (1-1 vs Warmachine, 1-4 vs Hordes. more on that later)

It’s a simple list. Lancers get arcane shield and act like heavy arc nodes. Stryker hangs out buffing troops and launching earth quakes. And the damage is done mostly from large combined range attacks.

Round One! Stryker vs. Menoth (Josh)

The tournament was full of scenario play, something it appears I am very very bad at. I managed to get one scenario point all weekend, so if I forget what mission was being played…. It’s probably because it didn’t make much difference to the result.

First up was Josh, a nice young fellow from Napier who had come all the way to Wellington to represent! Josh fielded pKreoss against Stryker and the game instantly had an old school feeling to it, two starter casters going up against each other.

The mission had two control areas in the middle of the board.

Josh outplayed me and he set up very well. His trio of jacks set up against my long gunners… and were made immune to ranged attacks. This made my long gunners useless for a good chunk of the game. He also set up his unit with hunter opposite my trenchers; this allowed his guys to ignore the fact my boys were dug in. Kreoss hid at the back of the army, right behind his wall of heavy jacks

My new Lancer!

His infantry dealt to my trenchers, and would have smashed through if not for a few earthquakes slowing him down. By half way he had slammed my ironclad out of the objective area and had scored a point. His heavy jacks kept coming and his infantry was about to sweep through, Stryker’s feat turn (Bonus armour for the win) bought me some time, but he held one objective and was about to claim the other.

Then Kreoss moved out from the wall he had been hiding behind.

Immediately after this my Lancer disengaged from his infantry, giving up the 2nd objective and ran across the board. One earthquake later and the heavy jack wall is down. Long gunners move and shoot Kreoss crippling him and the journeyman warcaster finishes him off with a boosted shot.

A win by assassination! One round, one win. I’m feeling pretty good about now.

Round Two! Siege vs. Khador (Mike)

Battle lines are drawn, here comes the Khador juggers!

Right, so the way the tournament works is if your doing well, you play others doing well. So by winning the first round I got to play against someone else who had won. Ok, I thought, this should be interesting

This mission had some complicated rules involving an artillery piece and multiple control areas… I mention this in passing because they didn’t come into play.

Mike, the older of the two visitors from Napier was another good chap to play against. We both had a bit of a laugh while we were playing, and after playing him and Josh I’m tempted to go up to the Napier event.

Mike played Karchev the terrible, supported by two heavy jacks and the super heavy Behemoth. I took Siege, as I figured the only way to do anything would be to crack that heavy armour with Sieges feat and the Defenders.

This was the shortest match I played during the weekend. No sooner had the march of the Khador heavy jacks begun it was over. In round two, in order to attack my commandos who had snuck forward and killed his mages, mike decided to advance his beasty tough warcaster over to attack them.

I couldn’t believe he just parked his undefended warcaster, no matter how tough, in front of Siege and two defenders. One feat and two boosted shots later and Karchev was toast.

Mike lost this game, I didn’t win it, by marching out in front of the big guns he gave me a target I couldn’t ignore. After the game that’s all I could tell him really, he acknowledged that he just didn’t think it through.

Credit to the commandos for being a juicy target I guess!

So my all time record is now 4-5 and 3-1 vs. Warmachine!

Mikes Khador, I love the banners!

Round Three! Siege vs. Legion. (Chris P)

“Ah Crap!”

That’s what I said after hearing the draw for round three. I was up against someone else who had won two rounds and it was Chris P (the P stands for “I’m gonna pants you in this game)

I still have no answers for the Legion of Everblight apparently.

This will be a short report as all I did was flail around like a muppet while Chris tore my force to bits. He managed to wipe out half my commandos before my first turn, and things didn’t get better. I totally underestimate just how far his threat range is, and those big beasts have a nasty attack that will damage people dug in…. not cool!

Chris used the cover way better than I did, his force was more mobile, and generally he was on top of me before I could do anything and I played like a pinned down force all game.

Thanks to Absylonnia, his warlock, I managed a grand total of killing one light beast and a forsaken. He cured all the rest of the damage.

Chris lays the smack down!

I do have some small comfort in the fact Chris went on to win the whole tournament though. He plays very very well and one of my goals in Warmachine is to get good enough to play him on even terms. A lofty goal, because he’s yet to make anything resembling a mistake in the games we have played.

Ah Sean, the smiling assassin! He’s a Great guy to play against especially if you’re a new player. Always helpful in game and will give you very good advice in the post game breakdown. He will however, cheerfully smash your forces if you give him half a chance.

This was a bad match up for me. Sean picked eDenegra and an army made up of a fair number of incorporeal models. I had two magic weapons in pStrykers force so this was not gonna be an easy match.

I messed up by deploying my gunners in a forest that prevented them shooting in the first turn. That being said the game was closer than it probably should have been. Sean had the control points pretty early on, and I just couldn’t deal with his ghosts.

However, my ARM 21 Lancers proved to be very difficult for him to dislodge, and the whole game was played out with a small chance of one of them breaking loose to arc node Denegra in the face with magic blasts from Stryker.

Sadly for me, this didn’t eventuate and as resilient as my guys proved to the undead advance, Sean had the control points locked down early on.

Sean went on to come 3rd in the tournament, well played that man!

Denegra is a dirty coward! Come get some I say!

Round Five! Siege vs. Menoth. (Nic)

This was the one game I thought I had pretty early on. Nic was fielding a very heavy melee centric Menoth force that didn’t have choirs due to tier limits. EKroess is all exemplars, all the time and the force was two units of knights, one cavalry, bastions and 3 big warjacks. For my siege list for this was nearly a perfect match up.

The commandos had anatomical precision which is a perfect foil for the Knights ability to increase their armour. The warjacks and bastions are slow, so the cannons and siege could pound them and Sieges feat could spell doom for either heavy unit.

His cavalry fell early to Siege and the Defenders heavy barrels. His Jacks advanced to cover off one of the objectives. My commados managed to run to his side of the board forcing him to commit a unit of knights to defend against them, who got bogged down in forest and sprayed with scatter guns.

The end came swiftly when he advanced Kreoss behind his wall of exemplar bastions. Siege dropped his foxhole on the Bastions, giving the Defenders and Siege a clear shot at Kreoss. One feat and 3 shots later Kreoss was toast.

This was a classic case of rock beating scissors. A slow moving, but very tough melee force will have difficulty against Siege and his big guns. A Choir, or some other Menoth buffs not allowed due to the tier restrictions would have made all the difference.

3 win, 2 losses. Going well!

Round Six! Siege vs. Gators. (Casey)

In my opinion this was the best game of the event, and the worst game of the event for me.

I was matched up against Casey and his Gatormen, an army he had made to deal with shooting forces. This was a dream draw for him, a gun centric force and he could make most of his force immune to shooting pretty easily with multiple 5” “immune to shooting” bubbles.

It was a complicated scenario with one control point, but a second area you had to sacrifice models in to score.

My initial plan worked very well, I spread my forces wide with the Trenchers, Maxwell and Grenadier to take the objective on the left, Siege and the defenders covering the middle and the commados and chain guns on the right ready for the sacrifice.

Swamp monsters!

This forced Casey to split his forces somewhat, allowing me to do some damage. Afetr the 2nd turn it looked like Casey was going to win hands down as my left flank looked like it was about to collapse.

Cue Sieges feat round.

Gatormen might have lots of health, but when their armour is halved any decent shot can take them out. And this happened in Sieges feat round.

All of a sudden I had the upper hand, I had cleared the control zone and Casey’s beasts were far away from taking it back. In order to reclaim it, they had to walk right past my warjacks.

Casey was forced to send his warlock in to take care of business. He was the only model left contesting the objective, if I removed him from the zone I would win on control points, or I could kill him and score a caster kill.

Siege slammed him with a spell, but due to placement of terrain it meant he didn’t fly back the 5 inches out of the control zone, he stopped where he was and contested on his back.

This was a matter of millimetres of terrain and angle. I was a little disappointed that the move hadn’t worked, and the rest of my force worked Barnabas over until he had 3 health left.

The next turn Casey got his turtles within striking range of Siege and killed him.

I think I played out of my skin in this game, while I didn’t win I think I played as well as I could. I took on an army built to deal with Cygnar and my play style and took it to the limit. If Siege could have moved one more inch to cast that spell to change the angle I would have won. This game nearly went to time, it was by far the longest game I played in the tournament.

But that’s Warmachine, it’s a game where small distances can mean worlds in the result of the game.

Casey ended up coming 5th with his Gators and Farrow. It was especially good to see an army I haven’t faced before, there were many surprises and I really like the look and feel of the Gatormen.

Round Seven! Strkyer vs. Circle (Rikki)

Rikki was another one of the out of towners, from either Hamilton or Auckland (I forget sorry).

Rikki was a top drawer guy to play against, and I’m glad I had him in the last round. We both had a bit of a laugh while we played and the game never got tense at all.

Circle is another army that gives me issues, but I thought I played pretty well against this list. It was Baldur, many Wolds, some druids and those little floating laser shooting woldlettes.

Both of us had shooting and high defence, so it was a game of manoeuvre and a lot of misses. Difficult terrain, anti-magic and forests made my shooting tricky, and Rikki had similar issues with my armour buffs and dug in units.

The game was just getting close when time was called. Rikki had a wold on a charge into Stryker, who had popped his feat. My trenchers had engaged his druids and my lancers were closing on Baldur. My Ironclad was going toe to toe with Megalith and having got the first shot and under the feat may have stood a chance!

If the game had gone to its natural conclusion I think it would have been a classic. As it stands, the short time frame robbed us of a conclusion, which was a bit disappointing. Rikki had just score a control point, so he won the game.

Rikki, if you read this I’d like a rematch at some point J

Conclusions

I ended up on 3 win and 4 losses, not bad considering this was a tournament and I’m still a noob at this.

Interestingly my all time record is now 5-9 with 3-2 vs. Warmachine and 2-7 vs. Hordes. I think I need to seriously work on how I deal with the hordes factions, as they seem to have my number.

As for the event, it was very well run and I had a blast. Would do it again sometime, hopefully with more games under my belt.

Friday, 27 January 2012

Well, I really tried some experimentation with this group of trenchers. Some of it was a sucess, some less so, i'll let you be the judge of what worked and what didn't

First up we have some fun with weathering powders. Now, I've shown these two Chain guns side by side for a comparison so you can see what they look like before and after weathering.

I got a few questions on the techniques i used to weather them , and honestly, it was all experimentation. I grabbed an old manky brush and applied a small amount of the powder direct to the model. Instead of painting it on, which really doesn't work, I pressed it on. I sort of smearing motion pushing it out until it wouldn't spread any further. That's probably about all I can say about it really, just dab it on with a brush and smear for effect.

One thing to note is once its on it wont stick 100%, handling the model a lot will result in some of the powder coming off

Next up was creating some Trencher Commandos. I got a 10 pack of these guys, and honestly, i never thought I would field all 10 as one unit. Seems like overkill, especially as you pay the same cost for the scatter gunners. 10 Commandos for 10 points is far worse than 6 commandos and 3 scatter gunners for 9 points.

So I converted some of them into scatter gunners. I took the standard carbine that had and sculpted a round nozzle on it with green stuff.

Initially that was all I was going to do, but I thought they needed somethign extra to have them stand out. I didn't want anyone saying "OH THATS THE GUNNER, AS ITS NON STANDARD I DIDNT NOTICE"

Good luck not noticing the giant fireballs coming out of the scatterguns now!

I started by drilling a pin into the gun and gluing it in place. I then molded the green stuff around the gun, making sure I had a flower type effect around the muzzle. Not exactly pleased with the paint job on the fireballs, will look at that again in the future

Last, and least is the Trencher grenadiers. Same logic here, would rather have 6 trenchers and grenadiers than 10 trenchers. This didn't turn out so well, but at least with the paint job and the over the top grenades you cant mistake them on the table.

Right, off to my first war-gaming tournament ever tomorrow...... i'm gonna get crushed.

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

So my last warm up game before valleycon was against Chris P and his Legion of Everblight. You will hear many words used to describe the Legion of Everblight..... over the top, over powered, cheesy, broken..... the usual rant people have when they think a faction is too strong (or they aren't good enough to deal with it)

Well, I was not good enough to deal with the legion of this day…. So yes, they must be overpowered….. that or I’m not very good at this game (checks all time scorecard of 2-5)

:(

But really, what is the Legion of Everblight? Well, they are a faction of bloodmagic bioengineered dragony lizard monsters supported by corrupted elves and ogres. The beasts are very nasty looking, all mouths and sharp pointy bits. I really like the bioengineered nature of Everblight and it contrasts nicely with the other dragon led faction of Cryx (With its necromantic steam tech)

THE GAME

Right, so I was up against Chris who was using Bethane as his caster. Now she’s a funny one as she comes with her own personal monster (kind of like alice cooper on the muppets that one time) and she can merge with it in game….. it’s a weird mechanic but Chris says he never uses it.

Her theme force is focused on magic users as her feat gives boosted attack and damge rolls to magic effects. So the army I was up against had two big monsters, a lot of stealthy mages and a bunch of other support units.

Foolishly I decided to test out a completely new caster and list. This force was so spangly and new I don’t even have photos of some of the core models

THE LIST

Haley! She has temporal barrier which slows people down and a feat that gives everyone an extra attack! Surely this is a winning proposition!

Her theme list shaked out something like this

pHaley

Defender

Hunter

Lancer

Two units of 6 Long gunners

Long gunner officer and standard

6 Sword Knights

10 Precursor Knights

Precursor Knight officer and standards

The idea being that the Knights can tarpit (hold the line) well, the lancer could harass with it’s arc node and the big squads of gunners could do some damage….. well it was a theory at least,

THE GAME

It was the “three objectives across the middle of the table mission” which is a good one I think. I set up with a unit of gunners on each flank, sword knights on the right with the lancer. The Knights and the gun jacks were in the middle with Haley…. The cool thing about the Knights is they don’t block line of sight for my own shooters! THIS IS GOOD!

Right, lets move forward and get in position to start shooting at his infantry. I can totally hide inside Haley’s temporal bubble and delay his guys advance and pick them to pieces, then counter charge with my knights and get home in time for tea and crumpets

What do you mean all the infantry is stealthed?

What do you mean I totally forgot about Haleys temporal barrier and spent all my focus?

What do you mean that one spell you arc noded killed and entire squad of long gunners?

What do you mean I’m rolling 10s to hit in melee?

What do you mean that monster can fire through that forest and I can’t?

As the previous statements suggest, this wasn’t a close game. I didn’t push forward far enough and forgot haleys temporal barrier on the turn it would have been useful. Seriously…… dumbass move right there. Chris played clinically, and just rammed his forces down my armies throat, took the objectives and proceeded to do a little dance

Most of this is all down to me being a muppet…. If I wasn’t such a muppet I may have given him a proper game (I’m not saying the result would have been different, just saying it would have been closer)

I would say I was forgetting stuff because I was trying to rush my turns to get used to the idea of playing timed turns.... but that's a cop out really.

LESSONS LEARNED

Well for 10 points I’ll start with “when using Haley, remember when to use temporal barrier”….. that’s a good one

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Right, so I'm off to play in my first Warmachine tournament this weekend. I am expecting to get my butt handed to me by a hardened gang of experienced players. If I win one game out of seven I will be happy. I played my final prep game last week against Chris P and his legion of Everblight.... full report to come later this week

(SPOILERS - I LOSE)

Anyways, this tournament is 40 points and each force must be a themed list. Not a bad tourney to start on methinks, as several optimum combination's will be excluded by virtue of lists. At least that's what I hope. We are allowed two different lists and for my first list, i'm going with my man Mr T Siege.

Sieges list is pretty straight forward, its trenchers. You get a free master gunner, discounted trenchers and advance deployment for your Defender Warjacks.

The whole force deploys far forward and can rapidly move into positions where it can dig in. The plan is to knuckle down on or near the objectives and force my opponents to move me off. It's not a fearsome close combat force, but sieges feat and the commandos sharp knives could make elite infantry very cagey.

Saturday, 21 January 2012

The USA is the last nation to get profiled in this series, but they are probably the one that has the highest production values from me.

I had pretty much sorted the process by this point so the USA units have advantages that the earlier nations missed out on.

The Tanks have little flags on the turrets, the aircraft have actual transfers for logos on the wings, and the carriers not only have flags, they are numbered after actual US carriers that fought in the war.

I personally love how the US bombers turned out, such a simple paint job but it really gets across the Superfortress Scheme, which is incredibly iconic. I also like how it contrasts with the hellcat fighters.

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

So, I picked up a bunch of No Quarter magazine's recently. It's not a bad read, a good mix of fluff, hobby advice, gaming advice and blatant advertising of their products (Not as much as certain other magazines, but that's a different story).

One technique I saw in NQ34 was underpainting and I thought that sounded like a jolly good idea.

The logic is that you spray three separate layers of base coat on to a model. You start with a later of black sprayed all over the model. Then, you spray a grey coat over the model at a slight angle, enough to cover 80% of the model but not the undersides of objects. Finally, you spray from above a white coat that picks out the highest details.

You sue these three steps and Viola! You have a preshaded model that you can paint with light layers of rather watered down paint and it will look fabulous.

I was slightly dubious, but grabbing my trusty (NOTE THIS STATEMENT IS A LIE) airbrush I preceded to get busy and undercoat my fabulous new Precursor Knights and Captain Haley Model.

My first impressions are that it looks like a pretty good way to start painting a model. It makes highlighting and shading things like cloaks a "paint by numbers" experience.

I don't know if i'll stick to the "light glazes" style of painting they suggest to best utilize the underpainting. I do think this may become a standard undercoating technique though, it just spells out where to highlight and shade so much clearer and easier than a plain all black undercoat. Time will tell, and the quality of the finished precursor knights will definitely decide if I use this in the future.

Monday, 16 January 2012

This set of 6 pigments set me back $50 NZ dollars which is pretty good really (For those foreign devils in the audience that's like 14 US cents or 7 pence according to certain companies regional pricing models)

It's probably unsurprising that Flames of War have a good weathering range, being that all their stock models in the books seemed covered in mud, rust and gunk.

I also like buying Flames of War stuff out of a bizarre and misplaced sense of nationalism and kiwi pride. Even though I don't play the game I still feel good that a local game is doing rather well overseas, and is making a go of it against the big boys in the wargames market.

So rule New Zealand, Go Flames of War, RUGBY PIES AND BEER!

Ok, enough of that

So, the first models I tried out my new weathering pigments on were my Trencher Commandos. These guys needed to be dirty.

I just used a dry brush and padded some on to the areas of the greatcoats i thought would get muddy. The pigments are really potent so don't go overboard. I just brushed them out and let it spread naturally. I used the dirt pigment on the coat bottoms and a little bit of dust pigment on the tops of the jackets.

The top picture here was taken last weekend, before I got the weathering powders. You can what the coats looked like before I applied the weathering powders. It's a nice contrast.

You will also notice my scattergunner conversions in the background. More on them in a later post.

Saturday, 14 January 2012

Right, continuing our look at Axis and Allies anniversay edition we come to the Italians.

I may not be 100% right here, but I believe this was the first time the Italians were included as a separate playable faction in a global scale Axis and Allies game. Previously, the Italian forces were part of the Germans.

I went for a desert camo scheme, but one that looked different and distinct from the UK 8th army scheme. On the table they are very clearly different units than the British, so I consider that a success.

Including Italy does change the game slightly.It allows the Axis to do two stage attacks against an Allied power, one force taking an area that the 2nd can run tanks through. But it also introduces the need for two tech tress. German heavy Bombers won't make Italian Bombers any better.

I really like how the Italian Air Force turned out, probably my favorite units in the whole box. Painting the insignia on the wings was also one of my first real attempts at freehand painting.

Wednesday, 11 January 2012

You see, there is a tournament coming up and you need to field "tiered" lists for this particular event. That means picking a theme and going with it.

As I am a fan of Mr T Siege, and I have a fair number of trenchers my first list will be "Siege - The Big Guns".

For the list I need three Trencher guns, in this case two chain guns and a cannon. I don't mind the cannon, but I think its rather expensive for what it is. The chain guns are alright, but really they are there to screen troops and provide juicy targets rather than actually kill anything.

The neat thing about a siege themed army is that the entire thing can advance deploy and dig in. That means you can get on the objectives quickly and then people have to assault you to remove you, as your shooting defence is very high and your immune to blast damage.

I also painted up the specialist trenchers (see below). The officer allows his unit to marshall a warjack and opens some more flexible tactical options with his squad. The sniper comes with the officer, and is a good long range shot, but not amazing.

The master gunner is a very useful fellow and comes free of charge in a "Siege the big guns" list. He's armed with a shotgun and can help aim blast weapons (like the cannon above).

However, the big fellow here is Captain Maxwell Finn. An expensive solo who seems to have 100 separate special rules. He has a chain gun, an armour piercing knife, can make a trencher unit faster, can improve all trenchers aim, is tough, can attack everyone in melee range, can run after killing someone in melee...... and more.... I think. I seriously cannot remember all the crap he does, but i know someone is going to shoot him in the face pretty early on in any game I play.

Sunday, 8 January 2012

Well the holiday period is over for me after a disturbingly short time. Ah well, it was good while it lasted and it allowed me to take care of some work on the house and garden.

I also managed to do some painting and I will be showing off what I’ve done over the next few weeks. For now that will just be a shot of Coleman Stryker in his shiny gold armour and a long shot of my trencher guns.

So what’s coming up

Finish off the retrospective looks at Descent and Axis and Allies anniversary edition

Build up towards my very first wargaming tournament

Trenchers! LOTS OF TRENCHERS!

Repainting my models bases as I’ve found out that the Cygnar script can be translated into English!

A massive warmachine order, where I start expanding my collection to include mercenaries!

Retrospective painting looks at War of the Ring and Battlestar Gallactica.